Professor Cantor taught at Rutgers School of Law–Newark in the fields of Constitutional Law, Contracts, and Bioethics (Death and Dying) . He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1970 and became a Professor Emeritus in July 2005. He has been widely published in legal and medical journals on the topic of the legal handling of dying medical patients. His fourth book, After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2010. His prior books are Making Medical Decisions for the Profoundly Mentally Disabled (2005, paperback ed. 2009), Advance Directives and the Pursuit of Death with Dignity (1993), and Legal Frontiers of Death and Dying (1987). His most recent focus is on avoidance of protracted maintenance in a deeply demented state. For example, see "On Avoiding Deep Dementia," 48:4 Hastings Center Report (July/August 2018), 15-27. In 2020, Professor Cantor published a memoir titled: "My Eccentric Family: Memories from a Communist, Mafioso, Zionist Past."
Professor Cantor is a cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a magna cum laude graduate of Columbia Law School where he was notes and comments editor of the Columbia Law Review. He served as a visiting professor on the law faculties at Columbia University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv University, and as a Merck Visiting Scholar at Seton Hall Law School. Since his retirement, Professor Cantor lives both in Tel Aviv and Hoboken, N.J.